Dozens of immigrants being housed at Albany County jail

Federal crackdown has left ICE searching for facilities to take on those arrested

1of4Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple said dozens of immigrants are being housed at the Albany County jail under contract with the federal government. (Skip Dickstein/Times Union)SKIP DICKSTEIN2of4Regina Zsigmond, 42, left, and Laszlo Kovacs, 45, right, with their son, Levente Kovacs, 2. The two-year-old boy is currently being held in a Bronx shelter. (Provided photo)3of4Exterior of teh Albany County Jail on Thursday, June 8, 2017, in Colonie, N.Y. (Will Waldron/Times Union)Will Waldron4of4Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple addresses the Ceremony of Remembrance in observance of National Crime Victims' Rights Week at the Albany County Courthouse Thursday April 12, 2018 in Albany, N.Y. (Skip Dickstein/Times Union)SKIP DICKSTEIN

COLONIE — The Albany County jail will be used to hold dozens of immigrants as part of an effort by federal authorities to find secure facilities for people arrested in a continuing crackdown by U.S. immigration officials.

The sheriff said Albany County's 1,040-bed jail has been at about half capacity since last year. The jail has set aside a special wing where the immigrants will be housed apart from the jail's general population and also have access to free phone calls as well as medical and legal services.

Officials at Albany Law School are helping facilitate an effort to provide the immigrants with legal representation and translators.

Sarah Rogerson, an Albany Law School professor and director of the school's immigration law clinic, said the effort to assist the immigrants is part of a statewide initiative that involves recruiting attorneys, law school students and interpreters. She said gaining access to the immigrants being held in many jails is often difficult, but that Apple has opened his doors and made it easier.

A few months ago, law school students successfully helped gained freedom for a woman who was arrested in November 2016 and wrongly detained after she sought asylum in the United States.

"We have encountered cases of people who really shouldn't be detained," Rogerson said. "But for attorney intervention those people would stay in jail without a lot of hope of getting out in a timely fashion because of the backups of the dockets of the immigration judges."

Many immigrants plead guilty to low-level crimes without being informed that doing so may cause them to face deportation, she said.

"Having attorneys in the jail is the only way to make sure that these people's constitutional rights are being respected," Rogerson said.

But not all jails open their doors to the volunteer attorneys, or are willing to assist their efforts.

She said Rensselaer County Sheriff Patrick Russo "has not been very transparent about how he treats immigrants in his facility," she said. "Certainly we don't have the type of relationship that we do here in Albany County."

Russo did not respond to a request for comment. Earlier this year, he took steps to have some of his correction officers certified as federal immigration agents.

Rogerson said the volunteers have seen a sharp increase recently in the number of immigrants in federal custody, and that most of them are being arrested during interior sweeps rather than at the U.S. borders.

Apple said federal authorities told him that the individuals being housed at his jail were not among immigrant families arrested in recent months while trying to sneak into the United States. He was referring to a controversial federal policy — recently suspended by President Donald J. Trump — that resulted in immigrant children being separated from their parents after the families attempted to cross the border illegally.

State Attorney General Barbara D. Underwood filed a lawsuit Tuesday challenging the Trump administration’s policy of "forced family separation," which Underwood claimed was isolated to the U.S. southern border. The federal lawsuit was filed in the state of Washington by a coalition of 18 attorneys general.

The Times Union published a story Monday night highlighting the story of a Hungarian couple who were arrested after crossing the Canadian border in Franklin County last month with their 2-year-old son. The father, Laszlo Kovacs, is being held at a detention center in Buffalo awaiting deportation and the mother, Regina Zsigmond, has been transferred to North Carolina to face marriage-fraud charges under an indictment handed up in 2014. Their son, Levente Kovacs, is being held at a private foster home in the Bronx.

“Keeping children separated from their parents is inhumane, unconscionable, and illegal – and we’re filing suit to stop it,” Underwood said. “By tearing children away from their parents and sending them hundreds of miles away, the Trump administration has already caused unfathomable trauma to these children, while undermining New York’s fundamental interests in protecting their health, safety, and wellbeing."

Lee Park, a spokesman for the New York Department of State, said their agency's Liberty Defense Project intervened in the Hungarians' case on Tuesday and they have taken steps to help secure legal representation for Laszlo Kovacs and his son.

Federal authorities told sheriff's officials the immigrants being detained at Albany County jail are from countries that include Nepal, Syria, Honduras, India, China, Guatemala and El Salvador.

"We've added dedicated phone lines to that wing because these individuals may not have money to pay for those calls," Apple said. "We also have a few video phones and are making sure they have access to those in case their families or loved ones have access to a computer. That helps alleviate a lot of stress from being incarcerated."

A spokesman for the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement in New York's regional office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It's unclear where the immigrants who will be sent to Albany County jail were arrested or what charges they face. ICE officials have recently conducted a series of arrest-sweeps across the state, including in the Capitol Region.

The federal government will pay the county $119 per day for each boarder, which Apple said will help bring in significant revenue for the county. He said the jail has about 40 boarders now; dozens more are expected in the coming weeks.

"I think we've proven ourselves to be an agency that cares about helping people," Apple said. "These folks were going to be sent somewhere, and chances are if nobody stepped up they could have been placed in one of the tent cities being set up. ... They will be in an air-conditioned wing and getting help with access to free legal services."

Rogerson said the effort to assist the immigrants in custody is expanding, and that attorneys and interpreters interested in volunteering should email The Legal Project, which has scheduled a training session for July 11, at cric@legalproject.org.

Brendan J. Lyons joined the Times Union in 1998 as a crime reporter before being assigned to the investigations team. He became editor of the investigations team in 2013 and joined the Capitol Bureau in 2017.